


Stay Out of It

by cymamoremocha



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Native American/First Nations Legends & Lore, Navajo Reservation, Original Character(s), Pre-Series Dean Winchester, Pre-Series Sam Winchester, Psychological Horror, Spring, Supernatural Seasons Anthology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 15:38:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14084109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cymamoremocha/pseuds/cymamoremocha
Summary: Fresh on his own, young Dean decides to find out for himself why hunters never take cases on Indian reservations.





	Stay Out of It

The first time Dean ever put Baby in a corner, was, coincidentally, his first hunt on his own with her. He had a strong suspicion it was Dad's idea of a punishment in disguise, because John Winchester didn't do blessings. He handed Dean the keys, knowing full well Dean would be way too paranoid to even add his own breath to the debris and crushed beer cans already in the footwell. He knew, he had to have known.

Which is obviously why he sent Dean to Flagstaff. Already a sore spot in the bile of Dean's memory, it was the closest "border town" to his case on the Navajo Reservation. More specifically, the well over 27,000 square miles of winding and rattling washboard dirt roads, sagebrush, greasewood, and sandstone that would be falling out of Baby's undercarriage until Sam died of old age.

_Fucking Sam,_ Dean thought bitterly, as he dug his hands into the guts of an old Chevy he found outside of Leupp. This close to May, his little brother would most likely be gearing up for his 21st birthday with all kinds of hot California co-eds, while Dean was reduced to threatening the junkyard owner with an ass-beating if Baby's hood wasn't exactly as shiny as when he left her.

Knowing that this had nothing to with Sam didn't escape Dean's logical brain, but it gave him focus. Anger was way easier than the humiliation and anxiety he felt rattling at the windows of the old truck for the last 3 hours of his drive.

Dad always had something playing in the car, said it helped him think. The only time it was quiet was when something was wrong, and everything about this felt so wrong to Dean.

Shaking his legs out on the way into the Chinle "police station" didn't help, and neither did the sweaty, clearly overworked desk sergeant he met inside the small trailer. He glared over the top of his thick eyeglasses while Dean asked about his dead tourist "cousin," found mauled in a campsite in Canyon De Chelly, and impatiently told Dean that non-native crimes were outside tribal jurisdiction.

He waved him away until Dean mentioned the strange, designed bruising all over the victim's chest and the mutilated heart. When Dean tried for bluntness and asked about previous victims and what “your culture says what happened,” the sergeant barked at him to “stay out of it, boy.”

He supposed he really should have known better, what with his very appearance being a caution sign for getting any useful information. The locals were instantly wary but minding their own business, and every usual spot for scoping out lore was either a tourist trap or only good for a school book report. In hindsight, he was so glad he had Baby sit this one out; she would have been more out of place than he was.

The heavy communal vibe he got admittedly pinged a part of Dean's heart that reminded him of those cheesy family movies he pretended not to watch on the motel TVs. As a professional, though, he still needed answers. Calling Dad was obviously out of the question, but calling one of his old friends didn't seem to set his tail as firmly between his legs.

Father Jim was sympathetic and directed Dean to an old missionary/hunter friend of his who used to work the reservations. From Father Paul Mason's gruff and skittish old man voice, Dean got the contact for a local "friend" who had helped him out on a few cases, but he hung up when Dean asked what had happened.

That's how Dean found the middle-aged woman selling silver jewelry beside the main road. When he introduced himself as a friend of Father Paul, her dark eyes clouded momentarily before she fixed him with an appraising smile. Details of Dean’s case had her repeating what he had heard earlier, though not nearly as condescending.

"You should stay out of it, boy. There are things you're not supposed to mess with." Dean still had enough pride to only be slightly insulted.

Loretta didn't talk much in the way of specifics, but she mentioned cryptically that there was a reason the "other" hunters let Natives sort out their own on the reservations, and that “all the old cowboys were dead.” It wasn't arrogance, just truth, and Dean didn’t know how to feel about that.

Loretta caught his gaze and held it for the first time in their conversation. He felt all wires and gears and the deepest parts of himself he’d always trained to keep on lockdown, suddenly exposed to a stranger he couldn’t help but trust. She raised her right hand, adorned with an impressive turquoise ring and, maintaining eye contact, gently touched a fingertip over his heart.

A hook at the front of Dean's mind spun him into a slideshow of sandy fists gripping flint arrowheads, figures moving quickly and quietly through the brush, fierce drumbeats inside a flickering firelight, and tearful prayers projected to the sky. Inexplicably, he could taste blood on the back of his teeth as he watched more spill from the mouths of old folks being dragged by their wrists behind wagons; and found only dirt when he wanted air and bile to wail for a mother he never knew. He saw charred, dusty skeletons of abandoned homes and hopes in the eyes of kids who would never see them again. Crosses and nightmares danced together in a sweaty, grinning quartz crystal, all while the tinnitus of screams he heard penetrated memories he never wanted. He felt drunk and electrocuted and not in control of his spinning mind, and there was a dense fog filling his heart. He just wanted it to stop.

All of a sudden it did. Dean found himself rooted in that dusty flea market with his arms hanging like hammers at his sides, too heavy. His eyes were cloudy like he might have been crying, so he wiped his face fiercely, yet he felt completely devoid of anger.

He turned back to Loretta and asked in a childlike panic, “What happened to them? Where did they come from?”

There was a shine to her eyes, though her voice was even when she finally looked away at the ground: “They’re still here. We can’t leave.”

Dean understood.

There was no shame, only understanding, and Dean felt too shaky and full of adrenaline to think about it for much longer. It went against every one of his hunter instincts to leave a hunt unfinished, but his epiphany was that he hadn’t considered what Dad would have done at all.

Loretta smiled like she was proud of him, and Dean searched for the most precious token he could find to give to her, but all she wanted was a cup of coffee: 2 creams, no sugar. She dug into a small leather pouch in her purse, and pressed a small turquoise stone into his palm that he didn’t let go of the whole drive back to Flagstaff. He attached it to the kitschy dreamcatcher hanging in Baby’s trunk, and imagined Loretta smirking at him.


End file.
